“I’m going to get out of your hair.” I stand and turn in a half circle until I see the spot where I left my tote bag. “Lana, can I just borrow you in the hallway for two seconds? Sorry, Spencer.” I glance over at him apologetically and grab Lana’s cool hand.
Once we’re out in the dimly lit hall, I let loose with everything.
“I kissed Wesley. And now maybe I’m going to end up without either one of them.” I can feel the helpless look that has settled on my face, and I know that Lana has no idea what to do with me. This is not our dynamic. She is usually the helpless one and I am the level-headed straight arrow helping her to navigate her complicated life.
“And why is Spencer here?” I add.
“Wow.” Lana answers, her blue eyes wide, like she’s stunned. Or stumped. We’re quiet for a second, staring at each other, perhaps both taking in the enormity of the shit storm in which I have landed.
“Wow,” she repeats. “You know what? Let me cancel. Let me tell Spencer we’ll go out another time. Give me two minutes.” She starts heading into the apartment.
“No, don’t.” I grab her arm. “Don’t give up your night with him. Don’t let this be another thing I’m screwing up. I just need some time to think. Go. We’ll catch up tomorrow. I’ll be wanting details.” I motion toward her apartment door, trying to sound upbeat. As much as I would love to have Lana as my sounding board for the night, it’s true that what I really need is a way to sift through my thoughts, arrange them into some sort of logical order.
“But—”
“No.” My voice is firm. “Please, don’t cancel your plans. It’ll only make me feel worse.”
Her eyes search my face for a moment before she lets out a heavy breath. “Fine. But you are coming to my office tomorrow to meet me for lunch. Promise.”
“Promise.” I hold out a pinky, and she wraps her own little finger around mine in our age-old deal-sealing move. I give her a quick hug and send her back to whatever night she was meant to have.
When I emerge from her building onto the street, I realize I don’t even know which direction to walk. I wonder who would be waiting if I returned to the apartment in Gramercy Park, the home I have been sharing with Aaron and Wesley. For all I know, those two could be attacking each other at this very moment, although I know better than to think Aaron would ever hurt a man in a Wesley’s physical condition. More likely they are sitting around commiserating about what a selfish bitch I am. And they wouldn’t be wrong, either. I have always, my whole life, struggled against my tendency to focus too much on myself. I consciously work to ensure I think of others, like going out of my way for a sick friend or helping at the soup kitchen. Even choosing my career, I really did mean to find a job where I was engaged in some kind of righteous endeavor. But then I sold out, choosing my own self-interest, cash over caring. Well, until today.
I stagger on the street as I feel another stab of panic about the fact that I have quit my job, that I now have no source of income. But then I remember that I followed my conscience, that I allowed my principles to guide me, and perhaps I should be proud of that. Maybe it’s the one smart move I’ve made this week, this month, this year.
I’ve been absently walking eastward on Eighty-second Street since I exited Lana’s building, taking myself toward East End Avenue, the river, oblivion, but my newfound pride in my professional decision awakens something in me. I decide that I need to go home, to figure out what direction my life is going to take—personally, professionally, everything, everything.
When I return to Gramercy and turn my key in the apartment door, I realize I am holding my breath, nervous about who I am going to find inside. The apartment is dark in the main room, and for one blissful moment, I think that I am home alone, but then I hear music playing from the bedroom area. I recognize “One Tree Hill” by U2, and I know it’s Wesley. He’s always loved that haunting, whimsical melody. If I had to bet money, I’d say he’s got it playing on repeat. As I stand frozen in the dark, listening to the words, Bono singing about a dear friend who died in a tragic motorcycle accident, I’m struck. Suddenly I know exactly what I’m here for, exactly what I need to do.
Chapter Twenty-One
June 2017
I walk quietly down the dark hallway, passing Wesley’s closed door and slipping into my bedroom. Flicking the lights on as the door closes behind me, I stare down at the cell phone in my hand. I close my eyes and take a quick breath in, like I’m preparing to jump into a swimming pool, or a lake, or a freezing, swirling abyss, and I dial Aaron’s number.
“Hi,” he says cautiously when he picks up on the second ring.
I hear some sort of announcements in the background. “Are you at work?” I know he wasn’t scheduled to work tonight, despite what I said to Spencer earlier, who probably knew the schedule too.
“Yeah, I crashed in one of the on-call rooms earlier, and then I figured I’d just stick around.” His voice sounds thick, wary.
“I was hoping we could talk.” I lower myself onto the bed, moving gingerly on the down comforter, as though everything in my world is now fragile.
“Where are you?” he asks, and I hear suspicion in the sudden crispness of his words.
“Home.” I ease my feet out of the patent leather ballet flats I chose for work this morning, noticing the red indentations they’ve left on my insteps.
“Is Wesley there?”
“Yeah, he’s in his room. We didn’t see each other. I was at Lana’s all afternoon. His door is closed, and so’s mine. Can you come home?”
“I’m not sure I can be in the same room as you tonight. Or tomorrow. I need some space and time to figure out where we go from here.”
“What are you saying? That you’re thinking about ending things with me over this?” I balk.
“I don’t know,” he snaps. “I don’t know what I’m saying,” he repeats, his voice hard. “What you did was a complete and utter betrayal. I have to figure out how I’m supposed to marry someone I can’t trust.” He sighs heavily into the phone, like he doesn’t want to have said those words, like he’s being forced to behave this way. I listen to the rustling sound of his breath and I feel my eyes pooling with tears, my vision blurring at the damage I have caused.
“But I wanted to tell you that I figured it all out. That it’s going to be clear-cut going forward.”
“What did you figure out?”
I notice the background noise on his end has stilled, and I imagine he’s walked somewhere more private at the hospital to have this conversation, maybe an empty exam room. I picture him in his scrubs, a stethoscope draped around his neck, the phone to his ear.
“I’m not going to look for a job yet. I’m going to spend the next few months, or however long, taking care of Wesley.” I lie back against the bed, staring up at the white ceiling.
“What the fuck, Meredith? This is supposed to make me feel better?” His voice is rising.
“I realized why I kissed him.”
“Kissed?” He repeats, his voice heavy, knowing, like he wants me to get into the dirty details of everything else we did all over again. I can’t undo what happened with Wesley, so instead, I move forward with my original point.
“I was trying to find that light, that brilliant sunshine, that I used to feel when I was with him. I realized tonight that the light never came from him. It came from me, when I was happy with myself, and I haven’t been happy, not with myself. I’ve been so fucking miserable.”
“You’ve been miserable?” Now I hear hurt, anger.
“Yes, with my job. With the way I spend my days. With the anger I’ve held on to for the years since Wesley and I fell apart. I’ve become someone other than who I am, and I’m ready to change it. I realized tonight that all of my actions have been reactionary, the results of pain that I suffered before I even met you, scars on my soul. And, well, I’m done with it.”
“So, what’s your plan?” I can’t tell if he’s warming up or mocking me.
“But I like the person you are now. Liked,” he corrects himself, and I feel the blow.
“Please, Aaron. Give me another chance to prove who I am, who I can be.”
“Meredith.” His tone is flat, distant. “I can’t tell you what you need to hear. Not tonight. I need some time to process this. I can’t make any promises about where I’m going to come out.”
“Are you saying you might not forgive me?” My breath hitches as I wait for his answer.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What? No, Aaron,” I sob into the phone.
“You guys can stay in the apartment. I don’t have it in me to kick Wesley out, not in his condition. I will make other arrangements for myself until we figure the rest of this out. If we figure it out.”
And then the phone goes dead.
I’m not sure how much time passes while I lie on our king-size bed, crying into the duvet, but I finally sit up and wipe my face with the sleeve of my white button-down shirt, which is now riddled with wrinkles and smudges of eyeliner.
I stare at the wet stains on my shirtsleeve, trying to process that it was not even twenty-four hours ago that I woke up and went to work in a freshly pressed shirt, that I had a job, a fiancé. Now, less than a day later, it seems I may have lost it all.
So I do what I always do when all else fails: I pick up the phone again, and I call my mother.
When she hears my soggy voice on the phone, she is immediately concerned, as I knew she would be. I quickly fill her in on everything that’s gone down, including the make-out session with Wesley. I would have preferred to leave that part out, but she won’t be equipped to help me unless she knows everything. When I finally finish with the grand finale, that Aaron and I might be finished, I hear her sharp intake of breath.
“Oh, honey, no.” Her tone is partly sympathetic but also part command, as though she won’t accept this behavior from me.
“It’s not like I have a choice, Mom,” I snip back at her, wondering how I can be so reliant on her and so annoyed with her simultaneously.
“No, sweetie, just hear me out,” she argues, her voice kind but firm in the way she’s always had when she needs to steer me in the right direction. I almost feel hopeful for a second as I wait to hear what she says next.
“If you love that man, you don’t give up without a fight. You remember what happened with your father and me back when I was sick.”
Yes, what I remember is how easily she forgave my dad for almost abandoning her. I remember her closing me out of their relationship and keeping secrets from me. I remember my relationship with her hitting a low point that we are still clawing our way back from. I reach for a tissue on the bedside table and blow my nose loudly into the phone. Then I realize that, true to form, I’m thinking all about me, not about her or and my dad—pity party for one over here. Forcing my mind back to their marriage, I don’t recall my mom fighting for my dad. I recall her fighting for her life.
“A lot went on between us that you know nothing about,” she starts.
“Yeah, no shit,” I quip.
“Meredith.” A reprimand.
“Sorry. Keep going.” If I were less distraught at the moment, I might marvel at how quickly I revert to a teenage mentality whenever I argue with my mother, but right now I just want her to tell me how to climb out of the shit pudding I’m swimming in.
“You really messed up, sweetheart.”
Okay, not helping.
“Frankly, I don’t understand why you thought it made sense to have Wesley staying in your apartment with you, anyway. You’ve always been the one running after wounded animals, never minding the risk to yourself, even when we thought they might have rabies. It’s always been one of your best and worst qualities. So, basically, Wesley is your rabid racoon. You’ve gotten him to the vet, where they might fix his broken leg, but the animal still has rabies.”
“Wow, Mom. Thanks for that.” I blow my nose again.
“Listen,” she starts again. Her voice is quieter now, and I can tell she’s about to tell me a secret. “I’m not supposed to say anything. Gladys wanted to wait as long as possible—she said until after the wedding—but I keep telling her it’s going to be obvious well before that time.”
“What is, Mom? What’s obvious?” Every time I say more than two words, I feel like I’m going to start bawling again.
“She’s sick,” my mom says. “Lymphoma.”
“What?” I sit up, immediately sharp. “Aaron’s mom has cancer?”
She’s silent for a second, letting me process.
“And Aaron doesn’t know? Mom, no, that’s wrong. She has to tell him.”
“No, sweetie. It’s not on us to make this decision for them. And you don’t tell him either—you respect her wishes. When she’s ready, she will tell him herself. You can’t know what it’s like to have to tell your child you might be dying. You can’t know.”
“It’s not right, Mom. This isn’t right!” I’m shouting now. I am imagining all of the emotions Aaron would be feeling if he knew his mother was keeping this from him, and I have to do something. It doesn’t matter that we’re fighting, or decomposing, or whatever. This is not okay.
“All I was going to say,” she continues in her pointedly calm tone, the tone that is meant to alert me that I’ve gotten out of control, “is that this is not a good time for you and Aaron to be estranged. I have every confidence that he would come around at some point anyway, but who knows how long that might take, and this is a time when you need to be there for him.”
“But he doesn’t even know,” I argue as I toss my dirty Kleenex toward the small trash can in the corner of the room. It’s a feeble misfire, and the tissue sails down at least a foot from the wastebasket.
“Well, once he finds out, he’s going to need you to be there for him.”
We sit there on the phone together then, neither of us talking, as we digest each other’s words and our own. I have a quick memory of Aaron’s mother complaining of pain in her abdomen a couple of months ago at the Mother’s Day barbecue. Aaron offered to get her an appointment with a gastroenterologist at NYU. She said it was probably nothing.
“Is that what you were talking about with Mary when I came to the synagogue for the wedding planning?” It’s dawning on me all at once. I remember the way the caterer and my mom were whispering about someone with cancer.
“Yes,” she admits. Caught.
“I’m going to go out and see her tomorrow. Can I do that, at least?”
My mother sighs loudly into the phone. I picture her sitting at the kitchen table in Livingston, twirling the curly cord of the landline telephone around her finger like she did when I was a little kid. Rationally, I’m aware that my parents’ house is equipped with only cordless phones and has been that way for well over a decade, but I have a longing for those other days, so many years ago, when my mother could actually fix the messes I made.
“She’s going to kill me,” my mom finally says, “but if you feel you must, I won’t stop you.”
After we get off the phone, I stare at the blank wall beside the bed. All I wanted was to help people—Wesley, Moe—but everything turned into such a mess. I haven’t really done anything to help either of them, and my own life has burst into shards of disaster. And now, as I lie on the bed, feeling the urge to help Gladys and Aaron, I wonder if I’ll only muck things up worse.
My phone vibrates on the bedspread beside me and I pick it up, hoping for a call back from Aaron. It’s a text, from Wesley, across the hall:
Wesley: Everything OK?
I guess he heard me crying, or yelling. Or the pain I’m fee
ling throughout my body is so rank he can just smell it from across the hall.
Me: Yup. Just a standard-issue fight w mom. No biggie.
I’m sure he knows I’m lying, but I can’t get into it with him right now. I have to stay focused on Gladys, on Aaron.
I tap on my calendar app to see what time I can visit Gladys in Long Island tomorrow, and then I toss the phone down without looking. No need to check my calendar. It’s not like I’m gainfully employed or anything.
As much as I want to crawl under the covers and set time back by six months so I can do everything over, do it better, I think about Gladys and how frightened she must be. And Aaron. He’ll be devastated when he learns the news. Especially if she doesn’t let him help her. I have failed Aaron so completely in our relationship. I will not fail him on this.
I STEP OFF the Long Island Railroad in Syosset, sweaty from the un-air-conditioned train car. It took me until after eleven this morning to get a hold of Gladys and tell her I wanted to visit, and now, standing on the concrete train platform in the heat of the summer afternoon, I feel myself turning into a puddle of sweat and nerves.
Gladys clearly assumed I would be driving Aaron’s car out to the North Shore of Long Island. Otherwise, she would have insisted on picking me up at the train. I didn’t want to tell her by phone what happened between us. Nor did I want to concoct a fake story about why I wasn’t using the car. So I just let her know when I’d arrive at her house and then hurried off the line.
Now, as I step toward the navy-blue cab in the line outside the corner coffee shop, I wonder what I will say. I wonder if Aaron has spoken to her yet. I wonder how to tell her that I know she’s sick. I wonder if the sweat on the back of my thighs is showing through my clothes, leaving noticeable wet marks on my denim shorts.
After the cab pulls down the long driveway to Aaron’s parents’ house, I find a turquoise sticky note waiting on the front door: “Meredith—come around back.”
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